Vietnam – part 8

For those who think that Vietnam was strictly a civil war, the following should be of interest. With the collapse of Communism and the Soviet Union along with the opening up of China, records are now becoming available on the type and amount of support North Vietnam received from China and the Soviet Block. For example: China has opened its records on the number of uniformed Chinese troops sent to aid their Communist friends in Hanoi. In all, China sent 327,000 uniformed troops to North Vietnam. Historian Chen Jian wrote "Although Beijing’s support may have fallen short of Hanoi’s expectations, without the support, the history, even the outcome, of the Vietnam War might have been different."

In addition, at the height of the War, the Soviet Union had some 55,000 "Advisors" in North Vietnam. They were installing air defense systems, building, operating and maintaining SAM (Surface-to-Air Missiles) sites, plus they provided training and logistical support for the North Vietnamese military.

When I asked a well known American reporter, who had covered the war extensively, why they never reported on this outside Communist support, his answer was essentially that the North Vietnamese would not let the reporters up there and that because "We had no access to the North during the war, meant there were huge gaps in accurately conveying what was happening North of the DMZ."

By comparison, at the peak of the War there were 545,000 US Military personnel in Vietnam. However, most of them were logistical / support types. On the best day ever, there were 43,500 ground troops actually engaged in offensive combat operations, i.e., out in the boondocks, "Tiptoeing through the tulips", looking for, or actually in contact with, the enemy. This ratio of support to line troops is also comparable with other wars, and helps dispel the notion that every troop in Vietnam was engaged in mortal combat on a daily basis.

The Reason it all Hangs Like a Pall
There always has, and always will be, American opposition to war. The Revolutionary War had the highest, 80 percent, and that was because it was fought on home soil. Opposition to WWI was 64 percent, in WWII the peak was 32 percent, and in Korea it was 62 percent. What makes Vietnam different is the dodger disaster. Of the 2,594,000 million US Military personnel that served in Vietnam only about 25 percent, or 648,000+ were drafted. Compare that to the 16,000,000+ who dodged, and it works out to 25 dodgers for every draftee who went. Today, America’s crocks are crammed chock-a-block full of dodgers, and the crocks of academia are more fully crammed than most. America’s schools colleges and universities are overloaded with dodgers, who, to this day have a need to rationalize away their acts of cowardice and have a compulsion to vilify the very source of their guilt, Vietnam.

The antiwar movement was akin to a national temper tantrum that eventually engulfed and then afflicted the entire nation with its warped rational. This group, fueled and led by dodgers, were responsible for poisoning the American mind on the subject of Vietnam and eventually those dodging hordes influenced the American body politic to elect a Congress that stripped the soldiers who fought in Vietnam of their victories, and voted to cut and run in the face of adversity. To this day, academia, the media, the politicians, talking heads, and the draft dodging multitudes continuously feed off one another with their preposterous, addictive hallucinations about "Vietnam" and, this is done at small expense, only a handful of veterans bear the brunt of their vicious absurdities.

The reason "Vietnam" will not go away is because the story the dodging masses and their cohorts are perpetuating is not true, and it simply sticks in the craw of the none dodging population. Especially the young. If a teacher wrote 1 + 1 = 2 on the black board, kids going by would take one look and forget it. However, if 1 + 1 = 6, a certain portion of the kids would stop and question it. Same with Vietnam. The supposed "facts" being taught or presented just don’t add up.

Recently I had a young man ask me "How come North Vietnam, which has a land area smaller than the state of Missouri, and had a population of less than one tenth the size of America’s, could defeat the modern armed forces of the United States?" I answered "Son, they didn’t." He came back with "Then why did my teachers tell me that? My answer was "Son, they are mostly either draft dodgers or wannabes (as in wannabe a draft dodger but was too young, the wrong sex, or ?), or their descendents, or kin of, or other wise trick with, the dodgers. Take this article, go show it to them, and then ask for a detailed explanation of the American military defeat."